Does Vicks "First Defence" cold treatment work ?

No concoction will prevent you from catching a cold.
Different attacks can vary in severity of symptoms.
Different people can respond differently to infections
Your own body can respond differently to attacks depending on your general health, fitness, immune system etc.

People's understanding of these facts vary so much that billions of pounds/dollars/yen are made from them.

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A friend of mine swears by "First Defence", he says if he ever goes out where anyone might have a cold he uses it when he gets home and hardly ever gets a cold now. I can`t really try that because we have a young son who gets colds regularly, thus we`d have to use First Defence almost every day !

However, there are times I really don`t want a cold, like when we go on holiday and I want to get loads of swimming done, so I then use First Defence every day for a week before and for the period of the holiday, it might have helped. But, I have found on more than one occasion doing this that I may no get a significant cold, but I then seem to suffer from cold like symptoms for quite some time afterwards, longer than the cold would have lasted ! Has anyone else found this ?

Yes!! The 'cold like symptoms' are only a very mild sore/dry throat and slightly runny nose for a while if I use it. I will take that over a full blown cold developing any day though.

Paracetamol can be bought very cheaply - that and plenty of fluids and keeping warm are really the only treatment for cold.

Paracetamol, and all these other things like "Night Nurse", don`t cure the cold, they just mask the symptoms, and not that well in my experience. If you want to go swimming (or running or anything else which requires hard cardio work) you don`t want to be doing that whilst you`ve got a cold. You just don`t feel like it apart from anything, but there`s also some evidence that hard cardio work when you`ve got a cold can be bad for the heart, it can even bring on a heart attack. I remember reading an article on it about 20 years ago !

---------- Post added 11-01-2017 at 15:12 ----------

Originally Posted by Rupert_Baehr :
Most cold cures will cure a cold in 7 days.
Alternatively, you can do nothing and it will be better in a week.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daven

Excellent information

The average cold lasts about 10 days. Normally you feel a bit under the weather for a day or two, then really quite crap for a day or two, then slowly recover for the next week or so.
I`ve always wondered why even more effort isn`t put into finding treatments for the common cold. People who say "it`s just a minor inconvenience" are talking rubbish. If you went to the doctor and he said you`d got an illness which would leave you feeling really quite bad for 6 months, and under the weather for another two years, "but don`t worry about it, it`s just a minor inconvenience", you`d feel like hitting him. Yet that is what a cold does, it`s just that it`s spread through your entire life.
In some ways the common cold is responsible for more misery than almost anything else. OK it`s not going to kill anyone, let`s get it into perspective, but in this country relatively few people get, say AIDS, yet everyone gets cold, 100 plus in the average lifetime.

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I`ll have a some respect for the EU referendum result if and when the NHS gets its extra £350 million a week...... Oh, and we get our free trade deal "because we`re more important than Switzerland". Basically they lied, they won and they`ve got away with it.Aerials and Digital TV

When I get a cold it gradually gets worse for a few days, I feel pretty ropey for a day or two, then it slowly clears over the next 4 or 5 days.
I don`t feel like I can train (swimming) during that time, plus I feel crap.
Some people think colds are "just a minor inconvenience", in fact I read that in The Times once. I was livid. I hate getting a cold.
Let`s face it, most people get a cold or two per year for their entire life, and that`s every single person in this country.
If someone told you you`d got an illness which would make you feel crap for about 200 days (70 years at 1.5 colds a year, feeling crap for 2 days) "but don`t worry, it`s only a minor inconvenience" you`d probably feel like punching him, I know I would !

People with various compromised immune system conditions can get them all all the time, with varying intensity, it is a life of misery for many.

---------- Post added 11-01-2017 at 21:26 ----------

[QUOTE=Justin Smith;11572566]Paracetamol, and all these other things like "Night Nurse", don`t cure the cold, they just mask the symptoms, and not that well in my experience. If you want to go swimming (or running or anything else which requires hard cardio work) you don`t want to be doing that whilst you`ve got a cold. You just don`t feel like it apart from anything, but there`s also some evidence that hard cardio work when you`ve got a cold can be bad for the heart, it can even bring on a heart attack. I remember reading an article on it about 20 years ago ![COLOR="Silver"]

---------- Post added 11-01-2017 at 15:12 ----------

That is very interesting i have quite a heavy cold, went swimming(not much exertion) this week and developed very very severe chest pains, very worrying, but would of thought exercise would have been positive, now though I wonder if they are connected, off to google.

""Extracts of echinacea do seem to have an effect on the immune system, your body's defense against germs. Research shows it increases the number of white blood cells, which fight infections. A review of more than a dozen studies, published in 2014, found the herbal remedy had a very slight benefit in preventing colds.""